Japan has struggled for decades to come to terms with its wartime aggression in Asia, as denials of the Nanjing Massacre still hold sway 80 years later.
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Tsuru, Japan (dpa) – As China observes the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre on Wednesday, Japanese analysts say they have seen a widening chasm between the two countries as to how they view one of the most horrific episodes of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
On December 13, 1937, around 200,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands of women raped, after Japanese soldiers marched into the then-Chinese capital, according to a finding by an international war crimes court. Chinese authorities maintain that the death figure was closer to 300,000 people.
While books and magazines in Japan often include denials of the six-week-long orgy of destruction, also called the Rape of Nanjing, China looks at the incident from a more international perspective says Tokushi Kasahara, professor emeritus at Tsuru University in Yamanashi prefecture.
Kasahara is one of a small number of Japanese historians specialized in the 8-year conflict between Japan and China, which overlapped with World War II. He participated in an international symposium on the massacre held in the eastern city of Nanjing in September and says it provided a broad-ranging analysis of the event.
Kasahara says Japan’s mainstream media often focus on anti-Japanese sentiment in China in their anniversary coverage of the massacre, although he questions the validity of that. China, however, attempts to see the massacre “from the perspective of human history,” he explains, adding that some Chinese scholars have even proposed Nanjing become a peace memorial city to act as a warning to future generations of the dangers of conflict.
Japan’s history education has also long downplayed the Japanese military’s wartime atrocities in Asia, such as the Nanjing Massacre. Instead, it teaches the public that the country fought a war against the United States, starting from its attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 and ending with US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Some Japanese politicians such as Tomomi Inada and Nariaki Nakayama, who denied the massacre, whipping up nationalism, even became ministers.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe picked Inada as his defence minister last year, but she was forced to resign in July, taking responsibility for an alleged cover-up of military reports on Japanese troops deployed in South Sudan as UN peacekeepers.
Abe himself had repeatedly denied Japan’s wartime brothels before he was inaugurated as premier in December 2012. He has long been criticized for pushing a whitewashing of the country’s atrocities during World War II.
“In Japanese elections, a candidate’s recognition of history does not matter,” Kasahara says.
According to Minoru Morita, a veteran political analyst who has held lectures at Shandong University in China, Japanese politicians denying the Nanjing Massacre is “inconceivable.”
Morita says Beijing wants to improve its relations with Tokyo, but Chinese leaders are “very critical of an anti-China stance taken by Abe and right-wing lawmakers around him.”
The issue doesn’t seem to be hitting trade or tourism between the two countries though. China is Japan’s largest trading partner and the largest market for its tourism industry.
The number of Chinese visitors to Japan from January to October rose 12.9 per cent from a year earlier to 6.2 million. That accounts for 26 per cent of total overseas tourists in the period, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.
But, the two countries’ diplomatic ties are often soured over perceptions of wartime history. Last year, Japan temporarily withheld its 34-million-dollar contributions to UNESCO after protesting to the body over documents nominated by China on the Nanjing Massacre which were added to the heritage list in 2015.
The attitude of Japan’s political classes tarnishes the understanding of everyday Japanese as well, according to Tokushi Kasahara.
“Japan needs to teach the public about its wartime aggression in Asia properly,” he says. “Many have an insufficient understanding of the past.”
Takehiko Kambayashi 